I resigned as Kerala governor yesterday: Sheila Dikshit

August 26, 2014 17:18 IST

Sheila Dikshit on Tuesday signed as Kerala governor becoming the eighth governor appointed by the United Progressive Alliance regime to quit since the National Democratic Alliance government came to power in May this year.

Seventy-six-year-old Dikshit submitted her resignation to President Pranab Mukherjee, a day after she met him and also Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh.

The President's Secretariat has sent her resignation to the union home ministry for necessary action, official sources said.

"I have resigned, I did it on Monday, and I don't want to comment further," Dikshit, a former Delhi chief minister, said.

With this, Dikshit becomes the eighth governor to have resigned since the Narendra Modi government came to power on May 26. Six UPA-appointed Governors -- K Sankaranarayanan (Maharashtra), M K Narayanan (West Bengal), Ashwani Kumar (Nagaland), B L Joshi (UP), B V Wanchoo (Goa) and Shekhar Dutt (Chhattisgarh), have already resigned after being nudged by the NDA government.

V Purushothaman, the governor of Mizoram, had resigned after he was transferred to Nagaland in July this year. Dikshit, who served as Delhi chief minister from 1998 to 2013, was appointed Kerala governor in March just before the model code of conduct came into force for the Lok Sabha polls.

There were indications that Dikshit may be next in line to be transferred to Mizoram, a state where Sankarnarayan and Kamla Beniwal were shunted out to 87-year-old Beniwal, who had a running battle with a running battle with then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi when she was governor of the state, took charge as Mizoram Governor but was sacked after a month by the NDA government.